Wolfenstein: The New Order Review

Available for: PC, PS3, PS4, Xb360, XbOne

Developed by: Machine Games

Produced by: Bethesda Softworks

Release Date: May 20th 2014

What if World War 2 would’ve went the other way? That is the core question posed in Wolfenstein: The New Order. The game starts off in 1946 with BJ Blazcowicz and the allies assaulting General Deathshead fortress. After a few minutes of some good old ultra-violence, the tables turn and BJ goes into a vegetative state. Fourteen years later, he recovers in a completely Nazi controlled world and continues his mission.

You may wonder what exactly went down during Blaz’s fourteen year hiatus, and thanks to the wonderful collectibles system you begin to piece this together. Newspaper clippings can be found throughout the missions giving background on the altered history, and this backstory helps you care about the world a lot more than in similar shooters. Part of what makes the game a breath of fresh air for the shooter genre is the fantastic characters. Every major character from Tekla to Fergus, to BJ himself is written and voiced with more than enough quality to make you invest interest in them. I don’t know if it’s the well written characters or the quality of the story, but the game manages to make giant robot tripods, and metallic attack dogs believable.

Your standard armored attack dog.

The biggest driving force in the game though is the brutality you sense in the world. Through the sewer grates you hear a family talking about how their neighbors were arrested, beaten, and taken to jail. You hear from Klaus first hand about how he was a stereotypical good Nazi until he finally managed to have a child who just happened to have a clubbed foot. The child and Klaus’ wife were murdered in front of him and this led him to join the resistance. These stories along with the newspaper clippings you find, and the records of famous artists from the era who were forced to sing in German really drive home the severity of the situation.

The game is gorgeous, and shows off the power of the next generation consoles. Environments break apart as the bullets fly, and by time you clear a room you may find it looking like the bank hallway at the end of the Matrix. Occasionally the game does suffer from minor clipping issues, especially when trying to enter a cut-open grate. Overall, the sound effects and music are very good; however, occasionally the game mixes the environmental sounds over important dialogue.

The game often encourages stealth over going in guns blazing, and the stealth is generally well done. It feels great sneaking around throwing a knife in one guy, and popping the next in the face with a silenced pistol. On occasion though you’ll find enemies who don’t notice their fallen comrades despite looking directly at them. One of the cooler stealth related features is that when you silently kill a commander all of the locations of nearby collectibles are revealed. This comes at a price, as if you’re discovered by a commander he’ll call a nearly infinite amount of soldiers to his location likely leading to a quick death.

The guns are mostly standard shooter fare. Pistol, assault rifle, sniper rifle, and shotgun are all here. You do gain access to a laser rifle that in addition to killing enemies can cut holes in walls to make escape routes. Each of the main guns has an alternate fire that really defines them, with the ricochet shotgun shells and rocket laucher attachment for your assault rifle standing out. Once you obtain a second gun of a same type the game allows you to dual-wield. The dual-wielding feels necessary at times, but terrible at others as the speed/damage trade-off usually doesn’t work in your favor. Also an oddity is the fact that you have to look at an item and press square to pick it up. This can become cumbersome in the heat of a fire fight when you really need to pick up some ammo, but don’t want to stop in the middle of the open to get it.

your not so standard robot attack dog

Possibly my favorite feature is the simple perk system. You unlock perks by performing feats specific to the perk you want to unlock. If you want to decrease reload time while dual-wielding, you get dual-wielding kills; however, if you want the ability to throw your knife at an enemy you simply need to get a few stealth kills.

Overall Wolfenstein: The New Order is a surprisingly good first person shooter. While the gameplay doesn’t add much to the genre, the story takes you on a wild ride that’s worth the price of admission.